Distance Education Student Guide

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Distance Education Policy

Northeast Alabama Community College (NACC) recognizes distance education as a delivery system for instruction. Distance education is defined as a formal educational process in which the majority of the instruction (interaction between students and instructors and among students) in a course occurs when students and instructors are not in the same place. The goal of these courses is to help fulfill the NACC mission of providing available, accessible, and affordable courses for transfer and career programs for students.

All of the present policies that apply to on-campus or “traditional classroom” education will apply to the area of distance education. This includes admission, prerequisites, grade requirements, etc.

1. Distance education courses must be of the same quality and rigor as those presented on campus. Instructors or program directors of distance education courses must demonstrate this equity of quality through a presentation of course syllabi and requirements, including the assessment of student learning outcomes.

2. Instructors must demonstrate how student work is monitored to assure integrity. Instructors will administer at least one on campus examination supervised by the instructor or an approved proctor. Students unable to travel to campus must take the exam under the supervision of an approved proctor. Students must submit proctor applications for approval prior to the scheduled examination. Instructors and approved proctors shall require students to show a photo ID.

3. Distance education students must have access to appropriate library/learning resource materials. These resources and how they are to be accessed must be specified for each course.

4. The decisions to offer courses through distance education will be determined at the division level based on student needs and the resources available, with final approval by the Dean of Instruction.

5. Students enrolled in Distance Education courses will have access to the same student services as on-campus students. Access may be achieved through face-to-face, telephone, and/or email contact and through dissemination of information via the College Catalog and the College Web site.

6. Each course must specify how the instructor will provide structured, scheduled access and interaction with distance education students and among students. The instructor must maintain records of this interaction.

7. The Office of Institutional Planning and Assessment shall provide a report on the effectiveness of distance education courses to ensure comparability to campus-based courses.  This report shall be produced each academic year.

8. Any special financial requirements involved in providing a distance education course must be identified.

9. Faculty who teach distance education courses must meet NACC requirements for credentials.

10. Faculty who teach through distance education technologies must receive orientation and training from an appropriate supervisor or from the Office of Educational Technology Support. Prior to teaching a Distance Education course, faculty are responsible for acquiring sufficient skills to present the subject matter effectively.

11. Distance education must be evaluated through an institutionally standardized evaluation procedure which includes faculty self-evaluation, evaluation of online instruction by students, and evaluation of faculty member by the appropriate supervisor.

12. In determining faculty teaching load, a distance education course will be considered the equivalent of an on-campus course that has the same number of credit hours.

13. The NACC Intellectual Property and Distance Education Course Ownership Policy governs issues pertaining to ownership of intellectual properties and is to be employed in conjunction with the Distance Education Policy.

14. Distance Education faculty members must deliver accurate and current information. Faculty shall not include in the content or delivery of a course any information which he or she knows to constitute libel, invasion of privacy, infringement of copyright or other literary rights, or otherwise violate the legal rights of others (See the TEACH Act).

15. A traditional course is defined as a course in which an instructor meets face to face with his or her students for more than 50% of the instructional hours. An online course is defined as a course in which more than 50% of instruction occurs online rather than face to face. For example, a three-semester-hour course has 40 hours of instructional time. Therefore, 21 hours of face-to-face instructional time constitutes a traditional course.